PROSODY AND SENTENCE PROCESSING - DOES AN EXAGGERATED SENTENCE PROSODY SUPPORT LANGUAGE PROCESSING IN SPECIFICALLY LANGUAGE-IMPAIRED CHILDREN

Based on the prosodic deficit hypothesis, this study investigated the ability of specifically language impaired (SLI) children to exploit rh ythmic-prosodic information in sentence processing. 11 SLI children (a ged: 5;2-6;11) were given a sentence reproduction task. The rhythmic-p rosodic structure of the sentences varied systematically, i.e., the se ntences were presented with a monotone sentence prosody, with a ''norm al'' sentence prosody, or with an exaggerated prosody. The exaggerated version followed the typical prosodic modifications seen in speech to very young children (''motherese'') to investigate whether this input manipulation could compensate for the language processing deficits of SLI children. As a group the children had more problems reproducing t he monotone compared to the normal sentence versions; when given exagg erated prosodic information they were not able to further improve thei r performance. However, an analysis of individual differences showed t hat this pattern did not hold for all SLI children. A subgroup of some what older SLI children with comparatively better rhythmic and languag e abilities was able to improve their sentence reproductions when give n an exaggerated prosodic sentence structure. The data pattern is disc ussed with respect to the interrelations between rhythmic and prosodic deficits on the one hand and language processing and language acquisi tion on the other hand.